Reap Rewards from your Rubbish - Waste in Food Businesses

We need to talk about food waste.

Sustainability is a conversation that all businesses, particularly in the food industry, need to be having. In the UK we produce an average of 15 million tonnes of food waste every year. Relatively speaking, that’s around the weight of 8,250,825 new cars. Enough cars, lined up bumper to bumper, to line the circumference of the earth a whopping 3.7 times.

What’s even more shocking is that 60% of that waste (worth around £12bn) could have been consumed. Instead it is quite literally being thrown in the bin.

Graphic from Feed the 5K Webpage

No longer can businesses afford to be ignorant of waste issues.

Businesses need to be making sure that the sustainability is high up on their agenda. There’s plenty of things businesses large and small can do to utilise their environmental agenda to increase the value of their business.

There’s loads of people who want to help you to improve the environmental value of your business.

As we found out when attended the MAS food waste workshop at the British Library, there’s plenty of organisations who are committed to making food business cleaner business. Melissa Addey, the specialist food advisor who spoke at the event, suggested that we need to turn our thinking away from waste as an expense and towards a way of generating new revenues. MAS is a manufacturing business support service that aims to help improve processes within manufacturing businesses, reduce waste, and put into place long term strategies to ensure continued sustainability. They provide match funded grants for SMEs - something that might be worth looking into if you would like some advice about utilising your waste in your business.

FoodSave is another initiative for SMEs which aims to reduce small businesses’ food waste as much as possible. They divert surplus food to feed people in need, before directing food unfit for human consumption to feed livestock where legally permissible. With any remaining food that cannot be redistributed, FoodSave supports composting and renewable energy generation. The aim is that, by 2015, 150 tonnes of food waste will have been prevented, making demonstrable savings to the local London businesses involved.

Other companies such as Giraffe Innovation, Sustain and Wrap also offer great practical advice and guidance on making your business more sustainable.

We need to start revolutionising the ways we think about waste.

At the event, Thomasina Miers, co-founder of the Wahaca restaurant chain, also spoke about their initiative, The Pig Idea. Wahaca has already proven itself to be a key player in sustainable business, winning a number of prestigious sustainability awards since opening in 2007.

The aim of The Pig Idea is to lift the EU ban on feeding catering waste, or swill, to pigs, reducing the amount of waste produced across the food industry. The initiative looks to introduce a robust legal framework for the safe processing of catering waste, including preventative measures to prevent disease spreading. In turn, this would lower the cost of feed for pig farmers, reduce the economic and environmental costs of disposing food waste, create jobs in the new eco-industry and liberate grain supplies to help feed people across the EU. If you’d like to take the pledge, or want to donate money to help the campaign, you can find all the details on The Pig Idea website.

Other events focusing on sustainability are popping all the time across London.
A couple of weekends ago we attended the Wasted! Brunch Club, hosted by our friends at Maida Hill Place. The event gave us the chance to chat with other foodies and discuss the plight of food waste with other business owners committed to sustainability. Over a delicious brunch provided by the West London People’s Kitchen, we heard from different initiatives from across London, including Feeding the 5K and Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters. Keep you eyes peeled for more events like this popping up in the next couple of months.

Some businesses have gone one step further and reuse food waste to create a delicious new product.
Rubies in the Rubble create delicious jams, chutneys and pickles packed with fruit and vegetables which are branded either surplus or ‘outgrade’ (products not fitting with the aesthetic criteria of supermarkets). In this, Rubies in the Rubble not only aims to contribute towards cutting food waste, but also sees its products as symbolic vehicles of their message: to consume less and think more about being sustainable.

Bananaberry - similar to RITR, BananaBerry use non-displayable fruit and veg to make smoothies which are delivered to offices around London. 10p from every bottle goes to Cancer research, and they offer a bottle-back discount for every one of their smoothie bottles you return to them.

Brixton People’s Kitchen aims to bring people together through learning about waste food, whilst at the same time gaining new skills in the kitchen and eating some delicious new dishes. Using waste food from local Brixton businesses, the People’s Kitchen invites people to cook in a local kitchen, sharing skills and making new friendships. The scheme has so far prevented nearly 720kg of food waste from being sent to landfill.

Kitchen Table Projects care about waste and are committed to becoming as environmentally sustainable as we possibly can.

Attending the event opened our eyes to the kinds of opportunities available to turn profit on your waste, and inspired us to continue working towards a more environmentally sustainable business model.

If you’re a small business and you don’t know about the British Library and their small business center, then check it out, pronto.

They run some great workshops (many of which are free to attend) and have hundreds of useful resources for small businesses and startups. Take a look at their website to find out more.